Odds are good it's because you're a dog. Uber-liberals like Josh Marshall think this new McCain ad is racist:
Why? Well because it shows images of Obama along with the flower of demure young femininity in the persons of Paris Hilton and Brittney Spears. Toss in some phallic landmarks and it should be obvious what the message is: Don't elect Obama or else he'll have sex with the sluttiest white gals around!
One obvious problem occurs to me. Most politicians only target people who are undecided. Does anybody really think that McCain needs to target racists? I mean, how many of them are likely to vote for Obama in the first place?
No, this commercial associates Obama with celebrities, and in particular with two of the ditziest and most superficial people on the planet.
Ross Douthat says the ad is childish. I don't know about that. One of Obama's real problems is that he remains a blank slate; if McCain can convince people that there's little substance behind the flowery talk, he could be halfway home.
Check out this description of minority journalists at an Obama speech:
When Obama walked on stage at the McCormick Center, many journalists in the audience leapt to their feet and applauded enthusiastically after being told not to do so. During a two-minute break halfway through the event, which was broadcast live on CNN, journalists ran to the stage to snap photos of Obama.
The Illinois senator talked about his trip overseas, reiterating his opinion that violence is down in Iraq but worsening in Afghanistan. And he expressed his approval of the Senate's passage of a major housing bill to help homeowners avert foreclosure.
Obama, who acknowledged that he needed a nap, stood up to say farewell to the audience of journalists, many of whom gave him another standing ovation.
Interesting article on the evolution of MoveOn, but I got a laugh out of this:
"The idea that MoveOn is like some foaming-at-the-mouth, swinging-from-the-trees liberal interest group is kind of a joke," says influential blogger Jane Hamsher of FireDogLake.com.
According to the Congressional Medal of Honor Society website, Daly engaged in four single-handed firefights to protect his men, killing 15 Germans, silencing three enemy machine guns and wiping out an entire enemy patrol. He was later promoted to captain.
"I'm no hero," Daly often said, according to the Connecticut Post. "The heroes are those who gave their lives."
The ones who say they're not heroes are usually wrong.
Those goals are the basis of the recent campaign that I helped launch -- along with progressive bloggers such as Jane Hamsher and the Blue America PAC -- to target selected Democratic members of Congress who have been responsible for some of the worst acts of complicity and capitulation. The campaign we launched, which raised over $350,000 in a very short time largely from dissatisfied progressives, has run multimedia ads criticizing the likes of Blue Dog Rep. Chris Carney and Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, despite the fact that neither has a primary challenger and despite the fact that Carney is quite vulnerable in his reelection effort this year.
It's not my business to tell the libs what to do, but this is really, really stupid. Targeting non-liberals in swing districts makes no sense. If, say, San Francisco had a moderate representing it, I could see liberals targeting her.
Update: Andrew Sullivan has a guest blogger from the odious American Conservative that Greenwald links to approvingly who says:
Bizarrely, it is those on the left who most want to pursue a real progressive agenda who are criticized for imitating the sort of lock-step partisan loyalty to political leadership that typified the Bush years, while those who are content to enable and collaborate in the worst abuses of the administration are the pragmatic and reasonable ones. This is the absurd, imaginary world in which Ron Paul and Russ Feingold are extremists and Joe Lieberman and John McCain are "centrists"--no wonder the arguments defending that world make no sense.
If you don't think that Ron Paul and Russ Feingold are extremists, it's probably because you're way out on the fringe yourself; not that it's surprising from a writer for Pat Buchanan's mag.
Clearly this poll has to be considered an outlier at this point; if there really has been a shift in sentiment it should show up pretty quickly.
Republican presidential candidate John McCain moved from being behind by 6 points among "likely" voters a month ago to a 4-point lead over Democrat Barack Obama among that group in the latest USA TODAY/Gallup Poll. McCain still trails slightly among the broader universe of "registered" voters. By both measures, the race is tight.
The Friday-Sunday poll, mostly conducted as Obama was returning from his much-publicized overseas trip and released just this hour, shows McCain now ahead 49%-45% among voters that Gallup believes are most likely to go to the polls in November. In late June, he was behind among likely voters, 50%-44%.
Among registered voters, McCain still trails Obama, but by less. He is behind by 3 percentage points in the new poll (47%-44%) vs. a 6-point disadvantage (48%-42%) in late June.
And what they mean for his potential presidency are covered here:
As a young college graduate immersed in the world of tax-bankrolled activism, Obama adopted the big-government ethos that prevailed among neighborhood organizers who viewed attempts to reform poverty programs as attacks on the poor. Speaking to an alternative weekly on the eve of his 1995 run for state senate, Obama said—in language that his wife, Michelle, would echo years later—that “these are mean, cruel times, exemplified by a ‘lock ’em up, take no prisoners’ mentality that dominates the Republican-led Congress.” He derided the “old individualistic bootstrap myth” of American achievement that conservatives were touting. Self-help strategies “have become thinly veiled excuses for cutting back on social programs, which are anathema to a conservative agenda,” he wrote in a chapter that he contributed to a 1990 book, After Alinsky: Community Organizing in Illinois. (He also depicted leftist community organizing as a harder task than similar efforts by the Christian Right, telling a reporter in 1995 that “it’s always easier to organize around intolerance, narrow-mindedness and false nostalgia.”)
"Barack is well aware of the complexity and the organizational challenge involved in the transition process and he has tasked s small group to begin thinking through the process,” a senior campaign adviser said. “Barack has made his expectations clear about what he wants from such a process, how he wants it to move forward, and the establishment and execution of his timeline is proceeding apace.”
Not because of anything Obama said or did, but because of what the supporter did.
Before he died Wednesday evening, death row inmate Dale Leo Bishop apologized to his victim's family, thanked America and urged people to vote for Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama.
"For those who oppose the death penalty and want to see it end, our best bet is to vote for Barack Obama because his supporters have been working behind the scenes to end this practice," Bishop said.
Sounds like a swell fella. Why did they mercilessly execute this excellent Democrat, who was working on founding "Death Row Inmates for Obama"?
They try to make a big deal out of the fact that he did not personally kill the person whose death he was executed for. But:
Johnson hit Gentry over the head with a hammer, and Bishop grabbed him in a headlock and hit him, according to testimony. When Gentry jumped from the car and fled, Bishop ran after him and took him back to the car, where he was hit and kicked numerous times. Bishop acknowledged holding Gentry while Johnson struck him.
I was horribly ignorant. To be fair I, just like many people, had a lot of factors working against the possibility of me finding out the truth. High school history classes omit anything controversial. Texas is the holy grail of contracts for any high school text book publisher, so anything controversial is left out. Texas is not the only culprit, it is just the biggest. Like hospital food, textbooks are kept bland to make sure not to offend anyone who can’t handle spiciness. Also in my defense, I was never a person who could not locate Japan on a globe, or who did not know who the vice president was. I thought was one of the informed people of the US. Ahh, sadly, I was not even remotely informed.
Over the last two years, I have found out that:
Well, you can probably guess, it's the usual litany of evil that a kid who's just read Howard Zinn's books can spout. My guess is he's just finished his sophomore year at college. He's a little off here:
Another change to the Constitution is that Senators were not originally elected by the people, they were elected by members of the House of Representatives.
Not quite; the Senators were elected by the members of the various state legislatures, not the same thing as the House. And he's got a lot of ridiculous nonsense as well:
US oil companies are going to make money off of the sale of Iraqi oil. The US has been unable to get the Iraqi Oil Law passed through the Iraqi Parliament, even though I have read that they offered each member $1 Million each to pass it. Recent contracts circumvent the law anyway, our oil companies are going in, and they will make money selling Iraqi Oil.
Whether he pulled that one out of his butt or read it on a message forum at Zmag, it's nutty.
And don't ever tell me that committed Leftists love America:
Are we a good country? The evidence I cited above would indicate that it is probably not what we are doing at all. Yet for almost two years I have tried to tell my friends and family these things, and they resist them. My aunt recently said ‘well maybe the US has done some bad things, but I refuse to believe the US is the worst country in the world’?
This is a common sentiment. Why would anyone though, refuse to believe (accept) anything , if they are given evidence to support what they are being told?
John McCain said this today in Rochester, New Hampshire:
This is a clear choice that the American people have. I had the courage and the judgment to say I would rather lose a political campaign than lose a war. It seems to me that Obama would rather lose a war in order to win a political campaign.
This is the ninth presidential campaign I've covered. I can't remember a more scurrilous statement by a major party candidate. It smacks of desperation. It renews questions about whether McCain has the right temperament for the presidency. How sad.
Oh, grow a pair! Look, Obama made an enormous goof with his "I wouldn't have voted for the surge even if I knew what I knew now," answer. Heck, even Katie Couric, not noted for her sympathy to Republicans, was baffled by Obama's insistence on this point:
Couric: But talking microcosmically, did the surge, the addition of 30,000 additional troops ... help the situation in Iraq?
Obama: Katie, as … you've asked me three different times, and I have said repeatedly that there is no doubt that our troops helped to reduce violence. There's no doubt.
Couric: But yet you're saying … given what you know now, you still wouldn't support it … so I'm just trying to understand this.
Obama: Because … it's pretty straightforward. By us putting $10 billion to $12 billion a month, $200 billion, that's money that could have gone into Afghanistan. Those additional troops could have gone into Afghanistan. That money also could have been used to shore up a declining economic situation in the United States. That money could have been applied to having a serious energy security plan so that we were reducing our demand on oil, which is helping to fund the insurgents in many countries. So those are all factors that would be taken into consideration in my decision-- to deal with a specific tactic or strategy inside of Iraq.
Couric: And I really don't mean to belabor this, Senator, because I'm really, I'm trying … to figure out your position. Do you think the level of security in Iraq …
She's digging for the pony rather frantically and Obama's shoveling the manure back onto the pile.
My old buddy is at it again. How dare a newspaper cover the netkooks with anything less than reverence?
Beach described the gathering in stereotypes that better fit the aging Old Left of years ago than the much younger Netroots of today. I mean, how many of these bloggers have ever read much of Chomsky, as he suggested?
Much younger Netroots? I would remind people that although some of the liberal bloggers are youthful, many of them have graying ponytails. As for how many of them have read Chomsky, I'd suspect a fair number. Including Greg. Anyway the purpose of the story seems to be how Greg got the newspaper to spike the article.
Anyway, King informed me that the comments from Beach’s article had been wiped and it was impossible to find the article on the paper’s Web site, though it might still be there somewhere. Perhaps, he mused, "some editor finally looked at the piece and yanked it out of simple embarrassment."
Later Monday, I found the link to the original article on Google – and now the story had been removed from the site completely and was "not available."
Great job, Greg! Maybe for your next task, you could take on burning some conservative books!
The man charged with killing a father and two sons on a San Francisco street last month was one of the youths who benefited from the city's long-standing practice of shielding illegal immigrant juveniles who committed felonies from possible deportation, The Chronicle has learned.
Commit a felony, stick around. What the hell?
Ramos, a native of El Salvador whom prosecutors say is a member of a violent street gang, was found guilty of two felonies as a juvenile - a gang-related assault on a Muni passenger and the attempted robbery of a pregnant woman - according to authorities familiar with his background.
Plus, when it comes to domestic issues, I don't take Obama at his word. That may sound cynical. But the fact that he says just about all the wrong things on domestic issues doesn't bother me as much as it once would have.
The worldwide consensus is crystal clear -- citizens want their Governments to be neutral and even-handed in the Israel-Palestinian conflict, not tilted towards either side. And that consensus is shared not just by a majority of American citizens, but by the overwhelming majority. Few political views, particularly on controversial issues, attract more than 70% support among American citizens. But the proposition that the U.S. Government should be even-handed -- rather than tilting towards Israel -- attracts that much support. That's not an "anti-Israeli" view -- to the contrary, it's a position that America can and should resolve that violent, four-decades-long dispute by being even-handed rather than one-sided.
The poll result is a semantical issue. Who's going to come out in favor of not being evenhanded when asked? But as a practical matter it's like saying we should treat the British government and the IRA equally.
If you thought Hillary was going gently into that good night....
Big news folks - it looks like our efforts in contacting those Superdelegates are starting to pay off, so keep on writing to them (ok, maybe Donna B's a waste of time). There are unconfirmed reports, based on phone banking efforts to reach out to Super Ds, that eight previously Obama SDs expressed that, given the opportunity, they would vote for Hillary at the convention.
I doubt if they really have a chance in hell of pulling it off, but it may make for some drama:
I heard about an interview Will Bower of PUMA did recently, where he said delegates are starting to say they'll vote for Hillary in Denver if the DNC did the right thing and ran an open and fair convention. That means a roll call vote with Hillary's name put into nomination, and on the ballot.
My favorite Tony Snow moment came at the end of a Fox News show. Tony noted that some pictures had emerged of some Democratic party bigwig--it was probably Al Gore or John Kerry--during their long-haired hippie phase back in the late 1960s/early 1970s. Tony said that people should not make a big deal of it, that he remembered a guy whose girlfriend's brother thought he looked like Charles Manson. Up on the screen flashed an image of Tony himself from his own long-haired hippie phase.
But the other day, I was riding past an apartment complex. Three guys from a landscaping crew were out with their leaf blowers. And all three of them were black; none of them were Mexican. It was quite a surprise, an indication that Arizona's crackdown on illegal aliens is working.
Okay, I was rather critical of El Rushbo back in February, when he decided along with much of the conservative commentariat to start bashing the clear choice of Republicans for the presidency. I take back not a word of what I wrote back then. But leave it to Eric Boehlert to remind me why I used to listen to the guy virtually every day:
That's why there was no mention in the very long profile about the fact that Limbaugh has called Sen. John Kerry a "gigolo," mocked Democratic Party chief Howard Dean as "a very sick man," agreed that liberal philanthropist George Soros is a "self-hating Jew," denounced then-Sen. Tom Daschle as an Al Qaeda sympathizer, mocked anti-war crusader Cindy Sheehan, whose son was slain in Iraq, by teasing, " 'Oh, she lost her son' -- well, yes. Yes. Yes. But you know, this is [sigh] -- aaah. We all lose things."
Or that Limbaugh has claimed Democrats "hate this country" (i.e. "What's good for Al Qaeda is good for the Democratic Party in this country today"); denigrated members of the U.S. Armed Forces, calling military men and women who criticized the war in Iraq and advocated withdrawal "phony soldiers"; toasted photos of the prisoner abuse at Abu Ghraib as "good old American pornography"; suggested actor Michael J. Fox faked symptoms of his life-threatening illness while taping a pro-stem-cell-research commercial; called Sen. Barack Obama a "Halfrican American"; and announced Obama and Osama bin Laden are "on the same page."
I'd rather he hadn't said the bit about Casey Sheehan, who was by all accounts an exceptional young man. I don't agree that all Democrats hate this country; maybe half of them. At least some of the military men and women who criticized the war in Iraq were quite literally phony soldiers. Lauro Chavez? Jesse MacBeth?
In his speech on national service Wednesday at the University of Colorado, Obama promised that as president he would "set a goal for all American middle and high school students to perform 50 hours of service a year, and for all college students to perform 100 hours of service a year."
He would see that these goals are met by, among other things, attaching strings to federal education dollars. If you don't make the kids report for duty, he's essentially telling schools and college kids, you'll lose money you can't afford to lose. In short, he'll make service compulsory by merely compelling schools to make it compulsory.
Encouraging volunteerism is fine. Requiring it is not. And you know how it is; all those "free" workers don't come free to the taxpayer; there will have to be adults supervising their work. It's nothing more than a boondoggle to pad the public payrolls.
Maybe because they write buffoonish statements like this?
Ultimately, I think the United States is a pretty awesome country but it very plausibly would have been even awesomer had English and American political leaders in the late 18th century been farsighted enough to find compromises that would have held the empire together.
Jeez, at this point, the entire campaign is under the bus.
The freshman Democratic senator received a discount. He locked in an interest rate of 5.625 percent on the 30-year fixed-rate mortgage, below the average for such loans at the time in Chicago. The loan was unusually large, known in banker lingo as a "super super jumbo." Obama paid no origination fee or discount points, as some consumers do to reduce their interest rates.
Compared with the average terms offered at the time in Chicago, Obama's rate could have saved him more than $300 per month.
You may recall that the last member of Obama's campaign team to get a sweetheart loan was allowed to resign; presumably that option isn't available here.
Five thirty-eight does a yeoman's job of trying to rescue Obama:
So Obama's rate was 30 basis points better than the average. However, the amount of the loan and the nature of the property are not the only factors that determine a mortgage rate. Another major consideration is the creditworthiness of the borrower. According to current rate quotes from myFICO.com, a borrower with very good credit can expect a mortgage rate about 30 basis points better than someone with pretty good credit, and a borrower with excellent credit can expect about a 50 basis point discount.
But Obama was going for a very high mortgage amount (over $1.3 million). Contrary to what you might expect, those loans are a little more expensive than average-sized loans. And (as you might expect) borrowers on those loans tend to be credit-worthy individuals.
The Moderate Voice: Don't Run to the Center, Barack
Heheh, if there was any doubt that this is the "Moderately Liberal Voice" it should be gone by now.
To repair the damage done by Bush and his gang of neocons, what’s needed isn’t a balancing bipartisan approach but immediate corrective action. It’s outmoded ‘conventional wisdom’ to believe that Democratic candidates always have to tack centerwards (meaning shift right) to prevail in a general election or to attract swing voters and independents. I don’t buy it.
What most Democrats I know want now is an entirely different approach. With the Republicans still mechanically spouting policies consistent with Bush-era neoconservatism, what’s needed to achieve balance again isn’t compromise action, but corrective action. What most Democrats I know want is a different choice: in our government’s approach to the economy, national security, civil liberties, health care, energy policy and the environment and on and on.
Note that in the first quoted paragraph, Damozel doubts that Barack has to tack to the center to attract swing voters and independents. But in the next paragraph, what does she talk about? What Democrats want. Sorry, honey, Barack ain't fishin' for Democrats anymore.
As part of this process, I looked at the Obama campaign not through the prism of my own progressive views and beliefs but through the prism of a cold-eyed campaign strategist who has no principles except winning. From that point of view, and taking nothing else into consideration, I can unequivocally say: the Obama campaign is making a very serious mistake. Tacking to the center is a losing strategy. And don't let the latest head-to-head poll numbers lull you the way they lulled Hillary Clinton in December.
Isn't that amazing? Arianna looked at Obama's campaign with cold eyes, and saw the same thing that she would see with the warm eyes of a progressive. What an amazing coincidence!
Of course, inevitably Arianna is going to be disappointed. Obama's already begun flip-flopping on some of the issues he ran on during the primary, like NAFTA:
In an interview with Nina Easton in Fortune Magazine, Obama was asked about having called NAFTA "a big mistake" and "devastating." Obama's reply: "Sometimes during campaigns the rhetoric gets overheated and amplified."
Overheated? So when he was campaigning in the Midwest, many parts of which have been, yes, devastated by economic changes since the passage of NAFTA, and he pledged to make use of a six-month opt-out clause in the trade agreement, that was "overheated?" Or was that one "amplified?"
The key is that we have to make sure that the people don't buy Obama's run to the center as a legitimate expression of his real thoughts.
